The present invention is directed to a mounting support and actuator for a lower tool of an indexing packaging machine, in which web material is indexed using an indexing advancing mechanism for situating the packages being formed at a forming station and a sealing or sealing/vacuum forming station. At each station, a lower tool is raised toward an upper, stationary tool for performing the requisite tasks at the respective station. Hithertofore, the lower tool has been raised by a complicated linkage mechanism, consisting of cams, links, connecting members, chains, and activators, that maintains and ensures the parallelism of the lower tool with the upper tool, which parallelism is critical to the proper functioning of the apparatus and formation of acceptable packages. Examples of these prior-art structures are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,170,611 and 5,517,805. However, these prior-art, lower-tool activating mechanisms, owing to their weight and complexity, require large and heavy side support plates on the packaging machine in order to support and bear the heavy load and forces thereof, with such forces sometimes exceeding 10,000 pounds during the raising of the lower tool. Moreover, owing to the complex and sensitive nature of these prior-art lower-tool activating and support mechanisms, downtime of the packaging apparatus is not uncommon in order to fix or fine tune a problem thereof.
Because of the above-mentioned drawbacks, it would be highly advantageous to provide a support and actuator for the lower tools of a packaging machine that require less load-bearing for the packaging machine frame, and which is less complicated and less prone to downtime.